Rise
by Fantastic Nonsense
Summary: "She's holding the weight of the world on her shoulders, and she has never before borne such a weight, nor will she ever again if she survives this." Annabeth, holding up the sky in Titan's Curse. Vague Percabeth-Percy/Annabeth . Spoilers for TC.


Hello, everyone! This is my first time writing in this fandom, but not my first time writing. This fanfiction is based, loosely, on Kioko's 'Figment'. That one is amazing, and I definitely recommend you go read it.

So, anyway, enjoy this, and please review and let me know what you think!

~Aubrey

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><p><em><strong>Rise<strong>_

She's holding the weight of the world on her shoulders, and she has never before borne such a weight, nor will she ever again if she survives this. The world is pressing down upon her, slowly sapping her strength until she is barely holding it up.

The sweat drips down her face, and her exhausted frame shakes with fatigue. Those tired stormy eyes slowly drift closed. She is finally resigning herself to her fate. She will die, trying to hold the world, attempting to bear a weight no one can bear. She slowly sinks to her knees, the burden becoming too heavy for her to stand. She can feel every part of her aching body, from her locked elbows to her matted and sweaty hair to her skinned knees.

The rocks cut deeply into her knees as she kneels, the swirling vortex of clouds pressing down on her. Her arms tremble violently as she struggles to lift the sky, keeping it aloft.

She had been arrogant to think she could hold this burden alone. She thinks she can save everyone, including the boy who walked out on her. She thought that she could save him, when she saw him holding the world on his shoulders, begging her to help him. He had tricked her instead, and left her holding the sky up with the gaping wound of betrayal freshly reopened in her heart.

She doesn't know how long she's been like this, holding the swirling tornado above her. After the first hour or two, it just all seemed to blur together into one big mass of agony and waiting. She has nothing to keep her mind off of the immense pain and suffering that she has gone through, and it's showing. Sometimes she thinks she's only half sane, as she hallucinates and has conversations with people she knows aren't really there.

Sometimes, she sees him. That stupid stick of a boy she had left behind to fend for himself. She hopes that he won't kill himself without her, that silly Seaweed Brain. He tells her that he's coming, that he's not going to give up until he finds her _**(Just hold on!).**_

Sometimes she sees a girl with black hair, standing next to her and giving her strength. She talks to this one, gasping out words through constricted lungs; begging her to go get help and sometimes just muttering nonsensical things. Once, she thinks she hears herself say the unthinkable, a thought she had never allowed herself to say out loud before_** (I love him, you know).**_

Once, and only once, she sees _him_. A younger blonde boy, one without a scar running down his face, grinning at her and telling her to buck up, that it's not so bad, that he knows she can do it. She tells him to go away and never come back _**(she regrets it later, when the real one shows up to taunt her**_).

Part of her, the small part that is not totally focused on bearing the enormous weight and not collapsing beneath it, cries out for the one person she knows is coming to help her. She knows he's coming because she knows him; and she knows that he will not let anyone suffer if he can help it. Especially not her.

She sobs as she feels a bone crack. The pain that accompanies it is just one more added to the plethora of others, throbbing and making it harder to bear. She wants to just give up, to surrender herself to the mercy of the sky, but to do so would cause the death of everyone she cares about, and she can't let that happen. So, impossibly, she bears the weight of the sky, though it is inching closer and closer to the ground with each passing moment.

Vaguely, sounds assault her ears, the furious wind blowing around her carrying with it taunts and jeers from the enemy. Why are they here? What could they possibly want?

She blearily opens her dry and sunken eyes, just a slit, to see a familiar blonde head standing in front of her. She hisses in recognition as she takes in her betrayer, the one boy she thought she could trust. They had grown up together! He had given her the dagger she carried! How can he just stand there and look at her like that?

Abruptly, one sentence cuts through everything, and suddenly nothing matters anymore; not the wind howling furiously around her, not her torn clothes or scraped knees or aching shoulders or painful body or the exhaustion creeping up on her.

She struggles to her knees, lifting her head high and from some unknown place within her, strength that she thought had failed her long ago rushes through her, giving her the strength to hold the sky aloft once more, no longer just inches from connecting with the earth.

Suddenly, she has the strength to carry on, and she knows that everything will be okay, because he is coming. He is coming for her, and that thought alone is enough to keep her going, at least for a little while.

As the wind howls around her and the swirling vortex of clouds above her threaten to break her body in two, she mutters three words, three words that give her hope. Three words that reassure her of her sanity, three words that mean the world to her.

"Percy is coming."


End file.
